While Colophon is important to us only in legendary history, MILETUS is the most illustrious city on the Ionian coast during the period of accredited history. It was itself a great place, and also founded a great number of colonies, which are said to have amounted to eighty. As the maritime states of Greece in their colonisation, as it were, divided the different seas among each other, so that Corinth chose the Adriatic, Chalcis and Eretria the seas about Sicily, and Athens the Hellespont, so we find the Milesians in the Euxine sea. There they founded Cyzicus, from which they exercised their power over the greater part of the Propontis; they then established themselves on all the coasts of the Euxine, and thereby opened to themselves inexhaustible sources of wealth. The commerce in those parts was certainly the most lucrative, and must have yielded them immense riches. The Doric town of Byzantium might have shut them out from the sea, but the Milesians had already become too powerful through their colonies. The large rivers and the shallow sea yielded them the fish which are so necessary for a Greek, and they also were the means of conveying the supplies of corn from the Crimea, the Ukraine, and the Dnieper, that is, from the country which now contains the great corn-market of Odessa. But the inhabitants of those coasts not only sold their own products, but purchased Greek merchandise with native gold from the country of the Arimaspae, where at present gold mines are again worked,—a fact which corroborates the tradition in Herodotus. They took in exchange wine, Greek woollen cloth, Egyptian linen, Persian robes, and many other costly things. Owing to this double commerce, Miletus was wealthy and great during the time of the Lydian kings, and remained so during the first period of the Persian dominion. Then it was plunged into the deepest misery by misfortunes which succeeded one another in rapid succession. Miletus had been obliged to submit to the Lydian kings, but their rule seems to have been limited to the exacting of tribute, and not to have disturbed its autonomy—a relation like that in which Ragusa stood to the Turkish empire, to which it paid tribute, though otherwise it enjoyed many advantages and privileges. This was the period of the greatest prosperity of Miletus. It submitted to the Persians without vehement opposition. Afterwards Aristagoras allowed himself to be tempted by Histiaeus to induce Miletus to rise against the overwhelming power of Persia. This insurrection was commenced without deliberation, and carried out without a well digested design and without character: the city was taken, and its inhabitants carried into Persia as slaves. This event was the subject of the historical drama (Μιλήτου ἅλωσις) of Phrynichus. Afterwards the city was again taken by Alexander, and thenceforth remained an insignificant place; its harbour may have been filled up at an early period.